The ongoing saga of being a ongoing father of two - one with autism and one who died for 20 minutes.
From pre-birth, birth and through those difficult toddler years.
It's definitely a life changing event going from singleton to parent.

Friday, 3 February 2012

99% of the time, Emily is a dream. Content, loving, happy. You couldn't ask for more.

The other 1%, she can be a real rat bag. Sometimes it's warranted, like when you tell her she can't have or do something.

Other times, maybe due to her ASD, you have no clue what set off the chain of events, but you know you can kiss sanity goodbye for a while.

This morning was the latter, unfortunately. It started with Emily coming into our bed just before 6am. She didn't get to sleep all that early, so I knew this was a recipe for an exhausted child.

Breakfast went well, until she turned to me and started crying. That was it really, for the rest of the morning. Changed nappy while crying; got dressed while crying; brushed hair while crying; even stood on the ledge to look for books WHILE crying.

Sometimes dealing with Emily in situations like this, I feel like we're speaking different languages. She's at the age when she can make verbal noises, but a lot of the time I have no idea what she's saying. After she melted down over whatever it was about Cheerios that suddenly turned against her, she was yelling at me what she probably thought was a reasonable explanation of what had happened. Might as well have been reading the phone book in Chinese for all could understand of it.

Em's introduced another selection of "what the hell" words to her vocab. Things like "waiter" (which used to be used in a different context), "hitter" (I think, and there's no clue on that one) and "bad" which is wonderful as she actually uses it in context when things are not to her liking.

One thing she did do this morning (which was new) was tell me to "shh" when I was suggesting books. She can only see the book spines in the bookcase and a lot of time has to pull the book out to see what it is. I thought I'd be helpful and read a couple of names out to see if she was interested. She turned her head to me, repeated "shhh" about 30 times and then scrunched my nose up with her fist in a very awkward fashion, which I took to be frustration on her behalf.

Days like this that test both parent and child's "awakeness" are not fun. I'm exhausted from the early morning call AND from dealing with Screamy McScreamerson. I'm sure Em is exhausted from the early morning and the frustration of not getting her point across.

99% of the time, Emily is a dream. Content, loving, happy. You couldn't ask for more.

The other 1%, she can be a real rat bag. Sometimes it's warranted, like when you tell her she can't have or do something.

Other times, maybe due to her ASD, you have no clue what set off the chain of events, but you know you can kiss sanity goodbye for a while.

This morning was the latter, unfortunately. It started with Emily coming into our bed just before 6am. She didn't get to sleep all that early, so I knew this was a recipe for an exhausted child.

Breakfast went well, until she turned to me and started crying. That was it really, for the rest of the morning. Changed nappy while crying; got dressed while crying; brushed hair while crying; even stood on the ledge to look for books WHILE crying.

Sometimes dealing with Emily in situations like this, I feel like we're speaking different languages. She's at the age when she can make verbal noises, but a lot of the time I have no idea what she's saying. After she melted down over whatever it was about Cheerios that suddenly turned against her, she was yelling at me what she probably thought was a reasonable explanation of what had happened. Might as well have been reading the phone book in Chinese for all could understand of it.

Em's introduced another selection of "what the hell" words to her vocab. Things like "waiter" (which used to be used in a different context), "hitter" (I think, and there's no clue on that one) and "bad" which is wonderful as she actually uses it in context when things are not to her liking.

One thing she did do this morning (which was new) was tell me to "shh" when I was suggesting books. She can only see the book spines in the bookcase and a lot of time has to pull the book out to see what it is. I thought I'd be helpful and read a couple of names out to see if she was interested. She turned her head to me, repeated "shhh" about 30 times and then scrunched my nose up with her fist in a very awkward fashion, which I took to be frustration on her behalf.

Days like this that test both parent and child's "awakeness" are not fun. I'm exhausted from the early morning call AND from dealing with Screamy McScreamerson. I'm sure Em is exhausted from the early morning and the frustration of not getting her point across.